2015 Flood

So last Friday, I bought a new lawnmower. My Earthwise mower's battery died, and I decided that instead of buying a new battery, I'd try a new mower (more expensive, yes, but also 40 lbs lighter!) since the Earthwise had lasted me 6 1/2 years. I decided on the EGO mower, and Home Depot had the best price, so I picked one up last Friday.

Saturday morning, I mowed. Sunday was supposed to be Burlington. We packed up Dad's van, and I headed home to get things situated so that I could leave on time Sunday morning. I even went to bed on time, but couldn't get to sleep, because the Storm of Storms arrived, and when my neighbor posted on Facebook that she had three feet of water in her basement, I climbed out of bed to check my basement, even though my basement doesn't flood.

My house is up on a hill. It's not a steep hill, but it's a hill.

I opened my basement door, and there was six inches of water at the steps, which eventually rose to 14" of water at the steps--something that has never happened. The water rose chest-high in my garden; within 8 feet of my front porch, within 6 feet of the walk-down to the basement, which would have literally sunk me, and within 6 feet of my car.

It was the scariest, most surreal thing I've ever seen. Picture this: I head outside with my flashlight, it's almost midnight at that point, in my rubber boots and still in my pajamas, and I can't even get halfway down my driveway because the water's too high. I had to wait for it to recede before I finally made it to the road. And then, I discovered that my neighbor's house was completely flooded. She had a foot of water in her first floor.

Surreal. Crazy. Unbelievable. Those are the words we've been using all week, as everyone cleaned up and threw out. It's definitely something I hope never happens again.

Fortunately for me, since my insurance would not have covered anything (a fact which I've fixed now), I only lost a couple of bags of crap from my basement, a dead old electric lawnmower, and a carpet cleaner.

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